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WANTED: the Good Guys

While I was recently reading The
Tale of Troy with my fifth-grade class, a hand shot up from the back of the
classroom. The student wanted,
desperately, to know, “Who are the good guys?”
The thread of good and evil, right and wrong, had been lost in confusion
and machination, in plots and treachery, and in the struggles of the immortal
against the mortal, and of the strong against the weak. Knowing who was winning did not matter to
this young man. Knowing who stood with right and honor was what strengthened
his heart. He wanted to know: “Whose
side do I fight on? Where do I sign up?”

In that cry for clarity, I saw
once again how the human heart has an innate need to know who the good guys
are. It helps to keep us grounded. It strengthens us. We can endure suffering, if we recognize the
forces of good, why they fight, and the moral ground on which they stand or
fall.

When Sir Ernest Shackleton
embarked on his Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, he ran an advertisement in
The London Times: “MEN WANTED: for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long hours of
complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success.”

Over 5,000 applied.

The same ad has been run by the
Holy Spirit in our day, and the same response is pouring in. We just need to recognize it.

Throughout history, and no less
now, the good guys have often been few or hidden or seemingly defeated. They have pondered the implications of
refusing an oath and have chosen to be God’s servant first. They have gone into hiding in an Amsterdam
attic and kept hope alive in a copybook.
They have left their blood on church floors in Sri Lanka on Easter
morning and witnessed to the Resurrection. Their safe return was doubtful. They lost and were silenced. Or so it sometimes seemed.

During World War II, a call went
out for writers to preserve journals and diaries. There was a conscious effort
to safeguard the witness of those fighting on unconventional battlefields:
delivering supplies on bicycles, hiding families in farmyards, and whispering
news behind enemy lines. We know of
those good guys because we have their stories.

*

What if St. Thomas More had
sketched his thoughts as he reasoned his way to martyrdom? What if a child’s diary from Mosul revealed
her defiant hope? What if the men who
drafted the dubia had preserved their notes for posterity?

The truth, and the good guys who
safeguard and defend it even at the cost of their lives, is needed now more
than ever. In today’s struggle between
good and evil, the battle lines are often dangerously blurred. The powerful have the pulpit, they falsify
truth by stonewalling and obfuscation, and the moral path is abandoned as a
relic of an unenlightened past.

And sometimes those whom we think
are the good guys turn out to be crooks.
They betray our trust, inflicting deep wounds.

But the clarity of moral right
has ultimate and enduring power, which cannot be silenced. The existence of
good is, in itself, a response to evil.

You become a good guy in the
silent, regular actions of everyday life or in its most dramatic moments. When Todd Beamer boarded United Flight 93 on
September 11th, he brought with him faith, courage, and principle. God chose him for that flight because He
needed a good guy. Todd led the
passengers against the terrorists with the “Our Father” and a “Let’s roll.”

The very existence of the good
guys in the Church today preserves our sacred patrimony: the spiritual,
doctrinal, and moral traditions handed down through the centuries by God
through the minds and hearts of fellow good guys who have resisted attacks on truth
in order to strengthen us for what is to come, for what we will be called to
endure.

They ponder the implications of
redressing error in red paneled rooms down the Tiber in Rome. They may go into hiding because they’ve seen
the evil behind closed doors and have refused to acquiesce to the convenience
of a cover-up. They are silenced in
solitary confinement in a cell in Melbourne and witness each day to the lived
Crucifixion.

The call is a privilege. The safe
return is doubtful.

Shackleton’s men never reached
their destination. They lost their ship,
Endurance, and languished off the coast of Antarctica in what seemed an endless
vice-grip of the elements. But that
failed expedition is known as one of the greatest triumphs of the human
spirit. Shackleton returned with every
man alive, doubtless drawing strength from his family motto, “Through
endurance, we conquer.”

In a 1969 radio address, Joseph
Ratzinger predicted, “From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will
emerge. . . .the real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on
terrific upheavals. But I am equally
certain about what will remain at the end. . . .the Church of faith. . . .[It]
will enjoy a fresh blossoming. . .where man will find life and hope beyond
death.”

Long hours of darkness may lie
ahead, but we are assured of the final victory. The gods on chariots with
lightning bolts in their arsenals never have the last word. The God of Israel, who speaks in silence to
the faithful soul, always has the final say.

WANTED: The Good Guys.

Never underestimate how much you are needed to answer the call.

____________________________________

Elizabeth A. Mitchell, S.C.D.,
received her doctorate in Institutional Social Communications from the
Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, in Rome, Italy, where she worked as a
translator for the Holy See Press Office and L’Osservatore Romano. Mitchell
writes from Wisconsin, where she serves as Dean of Students for Trinity
Academy, a private K-12 Catholic school. Her dissertation, “Artist and Image:
Artistic Creativity and Personal Formation in the Thought of Edith Stein,”
focused on Saint Edith Stein’s understanding of the role of beauty in evangelization.
Mitchell also serves on the Board of Directors of the Shrine of Our Lady of
Guadalupe in La Crosse, WI, and is an adviser to the St. Gianna and Pietro
Molla International Center for Family and Life.